Saturday, 9 January 2010

What is root beer? It's weird tasting. Or, as M would have it, "root beery". It says a lot about this non-alcoholic drink, which some claim predates cola, that one of its key ingredients - oil from the bark of the sassafras tree - was banned as a cancer risk in 1960. Shortly afterwards, producers found a way of removing the bad stuff, although these days artificial sassafras flavouring is often used instead, complemented by a range of other flavours and spices. But there's no common recipe.